OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — One of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race riot, one of the worst race riots in U.S. history, has died at age 103.
Olivia Hooker was 6 years old when the late-spring riot destroyed much of a Tulsa neighborhood that had been known as “Black Wall Street.” She told National Public Radio in an interview this year that she hid under a table as a mob of torch-carrying people destroyed her family’s home.
The violence began after a black man allegedly assaulted a white woman in an elevator. The number of deaths was never confirmed and varies from about three dozen to 300.
Hooker’s goddaughter, Janis Porter, said her godmother died Wednesday (Nov. 21) at their home in White Plains, New York. Porter didn’t provide a cause of death.
